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802.11ac Frame Aggregation is Bottlenecked: Revisiting the Block ACK

Published: 25 November 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Frame aggregation improves performance of 802.11 networks by eliminating many overheads the single-frame transmissions incur. An originator builds and sends an aggregate (A-MPDU) of packets (MPDUs or subframes) from a window of 64 sequence numbers, and a block ACK then acknowledges the same window. The mechanism works fine till there are no packet losses. With the advent of packet losses (and their subsequent reporting by the block ACK), holes appear in the originator's aggregation window. An A-MPDU constructed immediately after by the originator then becomes smaller in size due to these holes. We discuss the effect of such inadvertent shortening of transmitted A-MPDUs on the performance of WLAN. We propose modifications to the block ACK and aggregation mechanisms, and show through our ns-3 simulations that the change improves the network throughput by up to 20% in hidden node scenario in simple basic service sets (BSSs) consisting of 32 to 48 STAs. Our analysis shows that improvement in the worst case throughput can be as high as 400% for the highest VHT MCS indexes with our proposed modifications.

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  • (2024)Packet Duplication for Improving Throughput of the Multi-Link Devices in Wi-Fi 7 NetworksJournal of Communications Technology and Electronics10.1134/S106422692470012869:1-3(87-90)Online publication date: 29-Jul-2024
  • (2024)Aggregation Algorithm to Increase Throughput of Multi-Link Wi-Fi 7 DevicesIEEE Wireless Communications Letters10.1109/LWC.2024.347429413:12(3484-3487)Online publication date: Dec-2024
  • (2022)Leveraging Frame Aggregation in Wi-Fi IoT Networks for Low-Rate DDoS Attack DetectionNetwork and System Security10.1007/978-3-031-23020-2_18(319-334)Online publication date: 7-Dec-2022
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  1. 802.11ac Frame Aggregation is Bottlenecked: Revisiting the Block ACK

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      MSWIM '19: Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems
      November 2019
      340 pages
      ISBN:9781450369046
      DOI:10.1145/3345768
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Published: 25 November 2019

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      Author Tags

      1. 802.11ac
      2. a-mpdu
      3. block ack
      4. frame aggregation
      5. wlan

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      Cited By

      View all
      • (2024)Packet Duplication for Improving Throughput of the Multi-Link Devices in Wi-Fi 7 NetworksJournal of Communications Technology and Electronics10.1134/S106422692470012869:1-3(87-90)Online publication date: 29-Jul-2024
      • (2024)Aggregation Algorithm to Increase Throughput of Multi-Link Wi-Fi 7 DevicesIEEE Wireless Communications Letters10.1109/LWC.2024.347429413:12(3484-3487)Online publication date: Dec-2024
      • (2022)Leveraging Frame Aggregation in Wi-Fi IoT Networks for Low-Rate DDoS Attack DetectionNetwork and System Security10.1007/978-3-031-23020-2_18(319-334)Online publication date: 7-Dec-2022
      • (2022)Analysis of A-MPDU Aggregation Schemes for HT/VHT WLANsAdvanced Information Networking and Applications10.1007/978-3-030-99619-2_37(388-398)Online publication date: 31-Mar-2022
      • (2022)Accurate Modelling of A-MPDU Aggregation Technique with Markovian Techniques and M/M/1/k QueuesAdvanced Information Networking and Applications10.1007/978-3-030-99584-3_55(640-650)Online publication date: 31-Mar-2022
      • (2021)Enhanced characterization and modeling of A‐MPDU aggregation for IEEE 802.11n WLANsTransactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies10.1002/ett.4384Online publication date: 26-Oct-2021
      • (2020)Revisiting Wi-Fi Performance under the Impact of Corrupted Channel State InformationProceedings of the 23rd International ACM Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems10.1145/3416010.3423223(83-92)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2020
      • (2020)Extending Throughput Performance for Low SNR Scenarios in WLANs Using Two-Level Frames Aggregation with Enhanced A-MSDUWireless Personal Communications10.1007/s11277-020-07650-2Online publication date: 4-Aug-2020

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